Archive for the ‘well being’ Category

In the <a href=”news090109.html”>previous newsletter</a> I made a case for practical “community action” with your neighbors, even if you have to resolve conflicts to do it. If there is a crisis, folks you don’t want your neighbors against you as well the rest of the world (you can read “the authorities” into this if you want). But that doesn’t mean giving him the key to your house, meaning your stored food, water, crisis supplies, and giving him license to take as much stored gasoline as he wants! Or letting him use your computer! It means being in a position to work with neighbors to get through whatever crisis hits.

Ideally you want the kind of neighbor we have, a former Libertarian Party guy who ran for some office years ago on the LP ticket, and a guy who knows Ron Paul: someone who you don’t have to worry about sneaking onto your property when your gone as long as he knows you won’t do the dame thing. Someone you have an unspoken understanding with. So what if you have neighbors who are busy bodies? We are not talking suburbia here, but we are not talking farms, either….six people per square mile stuff. We are talking subdivisions that happen to be in rural areas outside (usually) small towns. This one here encompasses about a seven miles radius and has about 50 full time families/individuals. Even so, there are those people who live in the more flat valley spots that are surrounded with neighbors (as opposed to us…we bought our place in a box canyon up higher, in a place where it would be unlikely to have neighbors on either side).

However, if you must buy land in very flat and desirable locations, a consequence might be that you will be surrounded by neighbors who might be live and let live or who might be busy bodies and gossipers, or who might want to borrow every tool you have and then you have to literally threaten to sue the guy unless he returns it. I never said you would escape jerks if you moved out to the country! Plus you might find one fine day that you have new neighbors…with six kids, seven dogs, eleven cats and fifteen clunkers sitting out on their front lawn…er, grassy areas by the road. Might remind you of one of my favorite “Simpsons” characters: “Some folk’l never eat a skunk, but then again some folk’l, like Cletus the slackjawed yokel…”

So. If you get those kinds of neighbors, don’t try to sue the SOBs or do what someone did out here: put out the eye of the neighbor’s goat. What you are going to have to do is go up to the head of the household and reach an understanding. Don’t go saying what he “ought to do” without some sort of compromise yourself, just because you’ve been “out here” for twenty years and he is the new guy. If the neighbor cats are pooping in your garden, don’t kill the critters, because cats are cats and that is what cats do. Cats ain’t dogs if you know what I mean. Deal with it. Take out that gun and shoot it in the air, not
at the cats. Maybe you can convince the neighbors to do whatever is possible to keep the cats in their property. Barking dogs? Noisy kids? Unsightly clunkers? Develop an understanding, and rue the day that you bought that flat place in the valley knowing you might someday have a bunch of neighbors surrounding you!

We don’t have ACORN (or HCAN or the SEIU) out here. Instead we have lots and lots of acorns falling out of oak trees. So what if it’s still summer? Seasons are weird in West Texas. We have the Dry Season and the Rainy Season (from July4 until sometime usually in September), with the rest of the year being in the Dry Season…except in certain El Nino years NOT followed by a La Nina! In 2004, for instance, it rained from May until the following February! We got 60 inches! Our main creek ran from June until the following April! But, back to why I brought up ACORN…

Folks in the community are “organizing” without ACORN telling us how to do it. Has nothing to do with “Town Hall” meetings, either. (And besides, our Rep., Ciro Rodriguez–the same Rep who voted no on the bailouts but will not support Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill–did his Town Hall meeting on HealthCare over the phone. I guess he saw what was coming, so he chickened out of the real deal. Didn’t want to speak in front of the gaggle of Ron Paul supporters that live out here and in Alpine–Dr. No has LOTS of support out here, I am delighted to say!). Considering this was a very divided community only ten years or more ago, this is quite an accomplishment.

Not only was this community the site of the “Republic of Texas” standoff in April-May, 1997, there was a lawsuit against many of the property owners who had stopped paying maintanence fees for one reason or another, mostly because of faulty land surveys and prior lawsuits. After the suit was settled in 2000, there was still a lot of bitterness over it, and it took a while for things to get back to normal and for people to bring themselves to speak to those on the opposite sides of the suit. For instance, I am now buddy-buddy with an elderly couple that I wouldn’t consider speaking to before the suit ended! Pretty much the bad vibes are gone out of this community, at least among full-time residents. This has allowed community groups to start doing things to help their neighbors.

From the very beginning of putting this site together, I have always insisted that if you are going to move out to the rural remote, especially full time, you must learn to get along with your neighbor! We are, I think, reaching the point where doing whatever it takes is going to be the only option. If things get as chaotic as some think they will (social upheaval, and the looting and crime that goes with it…or, on the other hand, the “Great Depression-like” destitution and begging in the streets type scenarios), wouldn’t you want to know that you can trust your neighbors not to steal that extra gas can you’ve been saving for emergencies? All part of the preparation, folks, preparation.

I will get into discussion of ObamaCare in just a few paragraphs, because my take is just a wee bit different than what “most analysts” are saying about it. First, because I am trying to offer practical solutions here, I would say that the best healthcare plan you can have is to watch what food and drink you put into your body, get off the couch or computer chair and get out there and tend to your garden or take a nice long walk (bring water!) or do various low-impact exercises, or go swimming. Believe it or not, your body just might be able to tell you what it needs.

Whenever we go on a trip to a city large enough to have several good eating places even if there are also places where the extra calories can be worked off, I invariably put on extra weight. I am already a bit overweight to begin with; nothing that seriously threatens health, however. But when a woman passes through menopause but continues to eat goodly portions of food as well as snacks, there is no way one is going to be able to stay fit and trim, period. And you know restaurants. They go from one extreme to the other: either you get half the food you think you’re going to get or you get twice the food you think your going to get. And, don’t forget–restaurants tend to use MSG, which makes you want to eat more. Finally, when you go to a city that has restaurants you would not normally find out in the desert areas of west Texas–that is, Galveston, and its fresh fish from the Gulf fare–one tends to want to pig out! Thus, when one gets home one knows one has to get it under control. Genetics and predispositions aside which no one has much control over, it really really is important what goes into your body and also what does not go into your body. In fact I don’t know what ought to be of more concern: that the govt. wants to tell us how to run our health care, or that the govt. wants to force us to get a vaccine.

Putting ObamaCare aside for a minute, let’s talk about how the govt., if it wishes, will likely force folks to get the ominous H1N1 vaccine which BTW has live H1N1 in it. Folks like Alex Jones would have you believe that martial law troops will line folks up and give them shots, or else be shot…with a gun, that is. Or some such dreaded scenario. But they don’t need to resort to that unless the chaos and civil war that will follow is what they are after. All they need to do is mandate that unless one gets the vaccine, one cannot work for any govt. of any kind; cannot collect Social Security and Medicare; cannot use public buildings; cannot go to public school or any school (including private schools and colleges) that take
Federal funds; cannot get gun permits; cannot vote; cannot get job trade licenses; cannot travel by airplane, boat, train, etc., and ultimately, cannot buy and sell. Am I sounded Biblical here?

Just a small “for instance”: before our son could get his driver’s license, he needed a “social.” Because he was home schooled and thus didn’t have the public school photo ID, he needed to get a Texas state issued citizen photo ID, because folks you get nothing from the govt. now unless you have a photo ID. At some point when he was about 7 or 8…my memory of the series of events escapes me…he needed vaccinations for some reason. The usual: MMR, Polio, Tetanus. Turns out Texas A & M Galveston would not have admitted him without these shots. Fortunately, he has only had to get the bare minimum and no booster shots. When our daughter first wanted to go to Mitre Peak Girl Scout Camp (where she worked as a junior counselor this summer), she had to submit proof of vaccinations. Fortunately, again she only needed the minimum and no boosters. Public schools, of course, require the maximum, including chicken pox. You get the idea. Unless they want to start riots and whatnot, the govt. will go the typical “gradualism” route with these shots. They will set forth some kind of timeline, after which you are screwed. Kind of like all males having to register for selective service after they turn 18–it must be done before one can get student loans or grants, or to graduate from college. Because folks in the USA really are waking up, the Feds really can’t afford to so blatantly “take the velvet glove off the iron fist” as Mark “Michigan Militia” Koernke used to say.

Now, as to how I plan to make a CONSCIOUS EFFORT to keep healthy: eat only once or twice a day, and eat smaller portions. Cut the snacks. I already walk about a mile a day in the evening, anyway. All I have to do is stick with it. Food will come from the garden and meat as organically prepared (and processed) as possible. Heck, we have all that fish from the Gulf…In other
words, I will let my body “tell me” when I need to eat.

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